Fate and Free Will - Which is More Important in How We Control Our Lives?

by Robert Wilkinson

This is one of the most common questions I get from people who want to know how Astrology fits in with Free Will, and is Fate something we can change or not.

This is a reprint from an article I posted in 2006. Since some are having issues of accessing old articles in the archives, I figure it's okay to reprint it in its entirety. If you want to go through the comment stream to see what was asked and how I answered about this profound issue, by all means check it out when you're done here. there are always interesting insights by readers, and back then I had a lot more time to answer questions, which may help to elaborate on the theme.

From the original article: A reader commented "I have read that when we don't live consciously, things then 'happen' to us as fate. I have also read that the outer planets (Uranus, Pluto) bring situations into our lives that are (seemingly) out of our control. Or do we attract these situations into our lives? How much control do we really have?"

In my experience, we have tremendous ability to control our responses; we have little control over when we will have to confront the need to rise to an occasion, as these are set at birth by the timing on our birth chart. We also must live within the larger configurations that affect us all.

That said, we can shape what happens and how long we will be maneuvering through the rapids of life by what we do, feel, and think in any given moment. We can get beyond certain problems fairly quickly, but we cannot escape our need to keep learning all we can to BE our Highest Self.

I originally answered the comment with

Briefly, Uranus, Neptune, and Pluto represent transpersonal pulses that affect EVERYONE. The rising or sinking tide that floats all boats, so to speak.

So it is probably safe to say we have little to no control over how and when these operate in our lives, since they are transpersonal and therefore beyond personal issues and biases. They are in fact often associated with "forces beyond our control," or Divine Energies that move us dramatically into new ways of doing our Being.

For example, we can choose to fear or love while we're enduring a life revolution. We can gripe or celebrate, but we can't do much about the fact that there IS a life revolution going on. We can only shape our responses to what happens, and override the lower self's tendencies while moving with the Divine flow. I continued

The Sacred Seven are the planets we learn to master, turning dysfunction into conscious utilization of each type of energy in productive ways that further the evolution of self and life. I did a post awhile ago on the dualities of the planets.

The Sacred Seven are the 7 visible planets that symbolize our inner "Lights," our planetary principles that we bring out of error into an ever greater perfect functioning. For example, Saturn's duality is Dominion/Slavery, which show us how to be more conscious of our Great Work of becoming ever more effective in our living Self-realization, as well as the fears and control issues that keep us enslaved.

We are attracted to whatever lessons we must learn through our thought-forms and desires, conscious and unconscious. These set up our lessons, where we learn love, wisdom, and intelligent action.

By learning about these, and finding a healthy self-control of the lower nature, we come to BE, instinctively and consciously, our Higher Self. That prevents many negative experiences, and facilitates many positive experiences. That's our true control over life.

Comments

But does free will really exists for humans? If one is not conscious - one can not have a free will. If you have clarvoyant seeing you are able to see hidden motives of people and so on.. - but that is often painful.